It appears that some people are confused about how the gender wage gap is calculated.

I know I am. I wan to see data, that clearly accounts for women that take time off to have children. i want to see comparisons between women and men who are the primary care givers for their children, as in they're the one who stays home if a child is sick and they have no sitter. And a separate comparison for those who put their career first over their family.

I don't dispute that there's a wage gap, I just want to make sure that when we're comparing things, with all things being equal, we're actually comparing things where all things being equal.

Smasharoo wrote:

Also, women aren't paid less on average because they chose some value other than money, or because they choose to stay home and raise kids, they aren't bad negotiators who won't quit and will work for less pay. Women aren't valued appropriately by the market because of bias. It's not complicated. Surprising as it may seem, given the last 100 years of social science, you @#%^ing idiots aren't the first ones to have these sorts of epiphanies. You can fairly trivially control for these factors, when you do, it turns out women are paid less. The most likely reason seems to be that men make most of the wage decisions, and people are more likely to pay higher wages to people who look like them. Sounds idiotically simple, but sometimes that's how it works. If you're not a white guy, you aren't getting the white guy money.

Probably the most interesting part for him would be starting at page 55. And interesting data to be noted starting at page 69 dealing with percentage of the workforces, by ***, that are full/part time. Page 73 shows average hours worked split out by ***.

The only thing that irks me about the data layout, is how they combine Salary and Wage into one value. Just because in my mind, hourly wage is much more likely to be something standardized and less likely to show difference. I could be wrong, but I'd be willing to bet that if it were divided out into two categories, you'd see a much better Wage performance and a much worse Salary performance.

To the original topic and not the deranged derailing by Rush Limbaugh's more retarded little brothers, I think her argument about the use of the over-use of the Damsel in Distress trope is spot on.

It doesn't matter if Link loves Zelda or Mario is in a relationship with Peach, that's simply the motivational factor for their characters to rescue the damsel. The women themselves are nothing more than an object waiting to be saved, completely incapable of saving themselves, and the reason why the main male protagonists want to rescue them isn't part of that equation. The simple fact is it is A) **** poor storytelling and B) really, really sexist. Now, there are any number of games that break this trope and try to turn it on its head, but there are far, far more that simply recycle the stereotype that women are weak, can't protect themselves, and need to be rescued by the avatar of the man playing the video game. The sooner we get away from this sort of ****, the sooner we get better video games.

Also, she didn't make her argument in some sort of shrill way, nor did she characterize all men as women-haters, nor did she say that video games were the only place where this sort of trope is used and abused. She made a solid assessment of the overuse of the trope in video games and discussed why she felt it was perpetuating the stereotypes that women have been trying to overcome for centuries.

Now to the derailing.

Brown Duck, making a point more eloquently doesn't make the point valid. It's like when gbaji decides to jump into an argument. You're bound to get well-written paragraph after well-written paragraph, but at the end of the day, his arguments — when you look at them deeply — are infantile and often fundamentally flawed.

Saying that "the loudest voices of feminism" are shrill, and man-hating is simply wrong. You are forgetting to ask the most important question, "Who is putting these voices forward?" The answer, almost universally, isn't women. It's misogynists like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and the far-right who cater to those that often believe that women's place is to be subjugated to men. How many times must we hear the latest outrage from the "femi-*****" on Limbaugh's show (that you hear only in specific echo chambers) before you realize that you are being that its all a plan to get you upset at feminists as a whole?

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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machin ery of night.

The women themselves are nothing more than an object waiting to be saved, completely incapable of saving themselves

If they were capable of saving themselves, there wouldn't be a game.

It's like when people criticize a movie saying "Why didn't the character just call the police in the first 10 minutes?" Well, because then it would have been a ten minute long movie. Likewise, games about self-rescuing damsels don't last very long (unless you're taking the role of said damsel).

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The sooner we get away from this sort of sh*t, the sooner we get better video games.

Nonsense. Mario Brothers would be the same game if Mario was rescuing his young nephew or chasing after his lost (male!) dog something "non-sexist" like that. Princess Peach being a woman didn't detract anything from the game. It may be a common convention, it may even be an overused convention but that doesn't make it automatically detrimental to the game.

You're bound to get well-written paragraph after well-written paragraph

Let's not go to crazytown here. I don't think I've ever seen a "well written" Gbaji post. Did you mean 'spell checked'?

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Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? ***. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

The women themselves are nothing more than an object waiting to be saved, completely incapable of saving themselves

If they were capable of saving themselves, there wouldn't be a game.

It's like when people criticize a movie saying "Why didn't the character just call the police in the first 10 minutes?" Well, because then it would have been a ten minute long movie. Likewise, games about self-rescuing damsels don't last very long (unless you're taking the role of said damsel).

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The sooner we get away from this sort of sh*t, the sooner we get better video games.

Nonsense. Mario Brothers would be the same game if Mario was rescuing his young nephew or chasing after his lost (male!) dog something "non-sexist" like that. Princess Peach being a woman didn't detract anything from the game. It may be a common convention, it may even be an overused convention but that doesn't make it automatically detrimental to the game.

The gender switch rescue trope was actually one of the things I really liked about the X-Files. Mulder was more emotional, Scully more business like. Mulder was out to make connections with the people on the case, Scully was more on the look out for danger. She'd pull her gun way more often than Mulder, and so with a few, notable and dramatic exceptions, it was usually Scully who went in to rescue Mulder's life, after he'd gotten himself in a pickle.

Sure but there's a lot more involved to a weekly hour-long show filled with dialogue than a game where some Italian guy jumps on walking mushrooms and turtles for eight hours. Gender flipping in Super Mario Bros. might have been good for a momentary "Oh HO! Hahaha..." but that's about it.

The gender switch rescue trope was actually one of the things I really liked about the X-Files. Mulder was more emotional, Scully more business like. Mulder was out to make connections with the people on the case, Scully was more on the look out for danger. She'd pull her gun way more often than Mulder, and so with a few, notable and dramatic exceptions, it was usually Scully who went in to rescue Mulder's life, after he'd gotten himself in a pickle.

The gender switch rescue trope was actually one of the things I really liked about the X-Files. Mulder was more emotional, Scully more business like. Mulder was out to make connections with the people on the case, Scully was more on the look out for danger. She'd pull her gun way more often than Mulder, and so with a few, notable and dramatic exceptions, it was usually Scully who went in to rescue Mulder's life, after he'd gotten himself in a pickle.

And yet, David was still paid more than Gillian.

Matt Smith should be paid more than either of them, I mean, he travels through time! That must be really hard.

The gender switch rescue trope was actually one of the things I really liked about the X-Files. Mulder was more emotional, Scully more business like. Mulder was out to make connections with the people on the case, Scully was more on the look out for danger. She'd pull her gun way more often than Mulder, and so with a few, notable and dramatic exceptions, it was usually Scully who went in to rescue Mulder's life, after he'd gotten himself in a pickle.

It's 2013. Just letting you know, there are better metaphors now. Olivia from Fringe, for instance. Nearly identical character that you don't need to be 40 to know who it is.

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Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? ***. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

Yeah, never got around to pirating Fringe. It hasn't been on australian TV. I'd mention Bones, but she never really hauls Booth out of deadly danger.

She doesn't, and while I love the show Seeley really comes off like a buffoon most of the time.

My other comment about David and Gillian was because there was some mention of the inequality of pay between men and women earlier in the thread, so it's interesting that while the show itself portrayed the Scully character as being the more solid\protector of the Mulder character, in real life the female versus male inequalities still existed. She wasn't valued as highly as he was though her contribution to the show was quite equal.

The point is that you rarely see men put in the similar situation, and, perhaps as a result, we as a society give tacet acceptance to the "women are weak and men must be the hero" mentality. Sure, it could have been Mario's dog, but it's not. And, women in most video games on the market in the past and even today are weak, sexual objects to be rescued by the big, awesome male hero.

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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machin ery of night.

Do most games today have women as "Weak, sexual" objects? I could see an argument for sexual, but weak? I can't think of a recent game that exclusively had women as weak objects (versus games that had both weak men AND women such as Far Cry 3). I don't play consoles though and could have missed some PC title.

I can't think of a recent game that exclusively had women as weak objects

Oh is that the criteria? Exclusivity? Since when has that mattered? "Well, we did make a game where you bang a hooker to restore health and then you can kill her to get your money back with no consequence, but we ALSO have a women who can shoot you with a minigun, so we're good, right?"

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Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? ***. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

The point is that you rarely see men put in the similar situation, and, perhaps as a result, we as a society give tacet acceptance to the "women are weak and men must be the hero" mentality. Sure, it could have been Mario's dog, but it's not. And, women in most video games on the market in the past and even today are weak, sexual objects to be rescued by the big, awesome male hero.

There are lots of violent young men with guns in video games too.

The whole princess rescue trope goes back thousands of years. I'm not so sure how detrimental or even relevant it is to gender equality in this age.

People being rescued from something - whether it's physical danger, or emotional rescue, or a financial rescue, is what life stories are all about. Sure, most 'physical' rescues are man rescuing woman, but there are many women and men who relate to that. it's romantic. It does makes use of the fact that women are in general not as physically strong as men.

But those stories are just one type among many. There are lots of games/movies/stories of men being weak morally or ethically - giving in to avarice or tempted by lust.... I'd hate to think we have to abandon those types of stories as well so as not to encourage that kind of behavior.

I think we have to give all people the credit of understanding the difference between real and make-believe. If we can't we have no business pretending at all, whether it be in writing or reading a book or playing a game.

Oh is that the criteria? Exclusivity? Since when has that mattered? "Well, we did make a game where you bang a hooker to restore health and then you can kill her to get your money back with no consequence, but we ALSO have a women who can shoot you with a minigun, so we're good, right?"

Since the point where people argued "Oh no, this woman is weak so that means we see all women as weak" and ignore weak males and/or strong females within the same setting.

Right, so the argument to that is somehow exclusivity? Wouldn't it be ratio? One strong woman to 500 weak ones equivocates to 500 hero archetype men and one weak one? I don't really care what media people produce or consume. I don't think it's a "problem" that women are portrayed as weak in media, but pretending they aren't is idiotic. If you want to make "***** killer 3d" where you stalk and kill prostitutes and people want to buy it, great, I'm fine with it. When you throw in a few *** hustlers and argue it's not presenting women as weak, it's not really addressing the issue, is it?

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Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? ***. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

I played a bunch of Duke Nukem 3-D. It was one of the first decent fps games you could get for the PC. I don't remember any women it. Maybe I just didn't recognize them - or probably didn't pay any attention to them.

I don't dispute that there's a wage gap, I just want to make sure that when we're comparing things, with all things being equal, we're actually comparing things where all things being equal.

How about a double blind study?

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Nobody who is familiar with the literature on this will be surprised, but it’s good to accumulate new evidence and also to keep the issue in the public eye: academic scientists are, on average, biased against women. I know it’s fun to change the subject and talk about bell curves and intrinsic ability, but hopefully we can all agree that people with the same ability should be treated equally. And they are not.

That’s the conclusion of a new study in PNAS by Corinne Moss-Racusin and collaborators at Yale. (Hat tip Dan Vergano.) To test scientist’s reactions to men and women with precisely equal qualifications, the researchers did a randomized double-blind study in which academic scientists were given application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position. The substance of the applications were all identical, but sometimes a male name was attached, and sometimes a female name.

Results: female applicants were rated lower than men on the measured scales of competence, hireability, and mentoring (whether the scientist would be willing to mentor this student). Both male and female scientists rated the female applicants lower.

Link to original post on the pic.

Edited, Mar 12th 2013 11:28am by Olorinus

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lolgaxe wrote:

When it comes to sitting around not doing anything for long periods of time, only being active for short windows, and marginal changes and sidegrades I'd say FFXI players were the perfect choice for politicians.

Speaking of MMORPGs, back when I played City of Heroes and hung around in the costumes forum, female players were every bit, if not more, likely to create **** female character costumes as male characters.

CoH had a lot of women tanks and DPS classes as well but I think the removal from the fantasy paradigm may have helped that.

I can't be the only one that never thought the Princess was kidnapped because she was female. At a young age it was always because she was a princess, a member of royalty, that she was taken.

See, I never even thought of it like that.

To me, the only reason Bowser kidnapped the Princess was because he knew Mario liked her and he wanted to make Mario mad. There was never any social subtext at all. People will read anything into.. well.. anything.. just to build a platform for their agenda.

I never thought about why Bowser kidnapped the princess. I never really gave Bowser mich of a personality in my head because it was just a simple side-scrolling video game with as little backstory as possible.

And I admit to trying to make the **** costumes in CoH. It was fun.

I don't know. It seems that games are evolving to an extent. I'm playing Skyrim the most at the moment, and it doesn't seem to be all "women are weak." And for every female bandit wearing a loincloth there's a male bandit wearing the same thing. ****, you can get *** married in the game if you want. That's pretty progressive.

Then there's Portal, where the good guy and the bad guy are female characters (if you don't count Weatley, and who does?), and neither one is exactly ****.

I never thought Bowser kidnapped the Princess. It was all a ruse to try to get Mario to accidentally fall to his death, so the Princess and Bowser could settle down together without fear of him stalking them.